I greatly appreciate you coming to the site and posting up a story as it does give the fandom in question a bit of love but there are times when you as the writer need to sit back and think things through a bit more.

I am not saying that your writing is bad but you need to do some research into the time period and the characters a bit more. No, I am not saying remove the story but you need to do a lot of research to make sure that it is as realistic as possible and is not cliché.

Firstly, as this is a Horatio Hornblower fic, set in a time period of the British army fighting Napoléon Bonaparte and set long before World War II which saw a large number of women entering the ranks of soldiers. Women were not allowed to become much in that time period... this includes and it is quite sad to say, soldiers and sailors as this was considered a man's job.

Women who wanted to enter the army were laughed at the majority of the time as we were seen as a much weaker sex whose only role was either in the kitchen or in the bedroom/home.

Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed playing around with history and have written fics that included femme!musketeers without realising what it was like for women back in 17th century France but the fact is, is that they wouldn't have been taken seriously back then and would have been made the laughing stocks of the regiment and the shame of their families.

For me, the realisation came when I found out that king Louis XIV would not hear of it if a woman wanted to join the ranks of his prized French Musketeers and since then I strived for realism. I found that despite everything my own character was going through that her male comrades would have considered her as a joke and would not have taken her seriously had this been in a time of conflict. Of course there could have been those soldiers that would have been keen on having a woman like her in their ranks but those would have been few and far between. See, she would get respect but she wouldn't have been considered their comrade under normal circumstances (no matter how many battles she went into).

While I have no reason to truly hate the story and I have to admit that you do write well. I tend to find that a story like this is so overdone that it becomes boring. You need to keep it realistic to the time period and insert your character in proper terms, not as this fighting soldier who gained respect from her comrades because she was a woman in the 18-19 century.

Also, I tend to find that with all your characters... you name the main one Brittany MacDonald. Either that is your name or you want your name to be this and have to admit that doing self inserts of this nature does not earn you many readers for long. It is okay to insert yourself into your characters or into the story but to this nature... I mean... it makes for dull reading.

Missy chapter 4 . 8/8/2012

This story sounds really good! Please update soon, I hope you haven't given up on it.